


An Afternoon Spent Shooting Skeet

by sixappleseeds



Series: The Evolution of Pynch [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-06
Updated: 2014-10-06
Packaged: 2018-02-20 02:20:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2411408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixappleseeds/pseuds/sixappleseeds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just after the events of THE DREAM THIEVES. Ronan's POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Afternoon Spent Shooting Skeet

The weekend after the Fourth of July, the Gray Man took them all to a shooting range. Ronan thought shooting things was probably the Gray Man’s way of coping with grief, and though he had his own rituals he’d never fired a gun before and decided it couldn’t hurt to try. Blue was appalled of course, but she came along, riding with Gansey and the Gray Man. Adam rode with Ronan in his BMW. There was no way either of them would get into the Evo. On the drive down Ronan did wonder if sitting inside Kavinsky’s old car would have been easier than following behind it, but Adam had held Chainsaw on his lap, and Ronan noticed the careful way he scratched the feathers behind her head. He wouldn’t’ve seen that if they’d all been smashed in the back of Kavinsky’s -- Mr Gray’s -- car. 

Mr Gray was showing Gansey how to stand and aim his shotgun in a little booth that overlooked an open field. Blue hovered nearby, arms crossed. Ronan stood well away with Chainsaw tucked against his chest. It looked strange to see Gansey bent around a gun, wearing safety glasses and ear protection. They all wore them - Mr Gray insisted on “safety first” or some bullshit. Ronan had dropped his around his neck and left them there. 

Adam stood by the clays’ trigger mechanism, his hands in his pockets. He and Gansey had struck a sort of truce in the days since Kavinsky’s party, since Maura Sargent’s disappearance and whatever had happened in Cabeswater, but they moved cautiously around each other as if neither was sure how long this peace would last. Neither Adam nor Blue looked at one another.

Correctly positioned, Mr Gray stepped back from Gansey and nodded to Adam. Adam shifted, hovering his hand over the button that would send clay pigeons shooting into the air in front of Gansey. “Whenever you’re ready,” Adam called. Gansey shimmied once, adjusted the shotgun against his shoulder, and said quite distinctly, “Pull.”

Two clay pigeons shot out from the ground in front of Gansey, one after the other. Gansey fired twice, _bang! bang!_ Both clays fell, unbroken, across the field. 

Chainsaw croaked and pressed herself against Ronan’s chest. Blue _harumph_ ed. But Gansey was smiling, at the Gray Man and then at Adam, who clapped Gansey on the shoulder. Ronan saw that smile shine over to Blue, too, impervious to her scowl and her disapproval. Ronan smiled himself, just the slightest bend of his lips. Only Chainsaw saw him, and she kept his secrets.

“Well Jesus, Gansey, you can try again,” Adam said. So Gansey and the Gray Man repeated the exercise twice more. The results were the same each time. “It appears,” Gansey said finally, “that I am not proficient in the manly art of shooting clays.” He cleared his throat, and failed to look dignified. The Gray Man laughed as he slid the safety back on the gun. 

Sometime in the middle of this, Blue had stalked over to where Ronan stood. She’d wrapped her anger around herself like an extra set of arms, clenched around her middle. Ronan wondered all of a sudden what would happen if she let it go, if she beat the shit out of a punching bag or shot up a bunch of clay pigeons or stood on a cliff and just screamed till she was empty. 

“Too much for you, maggot?” he drawled. She glowered up at him. He stared steadily back. She had a purple bandana over her hair. Ronan noticed it because it kept flapping in the breeze, making it look like there was a triangle attached to her head. 

She pulled off her ear protection and hissed, “I don’t like guns.” 

Ronan considered this. Gansey and Adam had switched places at the booth. Adam seemed to handle the shotgun with an innate confidence, and Ronan wondered if he’d ever been hunting as a kid. Was there ever a time when Robert Parrish tried to be a good father? Did he take his son out for turkey season? Ronan’s father never did, but then hunting wasn’t as much of a thing where he’d come from. 

“Is it the guns,” Ronan said, “or is it Gansey firing a gun?” 

Blue darted a look up at him that confirmed several of his suspicions about Blue and Gansey. He smirked, because it was necessary, and glanced back to where the Gray Man was now checking Adam’s stance. Ronan couldn’t see Adam’s face from here, but he saw him nod when the Gray Man offered some suggestion, saw him adjust his grip on the shotgun, and saw him flinch when the Gray Man set a hand on Adam’s shoulder. 

Chainsaw squawked. Ronan loosened his grip. He set his fingers at the back of her neck and rubbed lightly until they both relaxed. But Blue was peering at him now, peering as he watched Adam wrap his own fingers around the shotgun’s wooden forend, adjust his shoulders, breathe. Blue watched Ronan as the Gray Man stepped back, as Gansey leaned forward over the trigger mechanism, as Adam said, “Pull.” Ronan watched Adam as he fired, unloaded the casings, reloaded, fired again. He was faster than Gansey, his stance relaxed as the gun barrel tracked the flying clays. In the end, he hit four out of six. They shattered in dozens of pieces across the field.

Lowering the gun, Adam clicked the safety back on. He nodded to Mr Gray and shook his head at Gansey, who’d cheered each time Adam had hit a clay. Then he lifted his gaze to meet Ronan’s. Ronan caught himself swallowing. There was something triumphant about Adam’s expression, something he’d first glimpsed last week in Cabeswater, and it made a coil of tension twist and untwist in his gut. Ronan forced himself to speak, be the Ronan they all expected. “Well, everyone,” he called. “If the zombie apocalypse happens, I want Parrish on my team.”

Blue was really staring now, god damn her. He thrust Chainsaw at her and had the satisfaction of seeing her jaw drop. “Hold her,” he muttered. “No biting,” he added as he walked over to the booth. “Show me how it’s done,” he said to Adam. The Gray Man stood off to the side, and Ronan figured he was smart enough to stay there. Just because Mr Gray had bested Ronan in a fight once didn’t mean Ronan didn’t want to try again.

Ronan accepted the gun, and Adam’s instruction. “See how the safety’s on? Okay, right, well now you load it like this.” Adam’s hands moved around the gun with a familiarity that suggested long term experience. He slid two shells into the magazine, and locked the barrel back into place. “Keep that safety on, your gun’s live now.” 

“This ain’t your first rodeo, is it Parrish?” Ronan said. He realized he wasn’t looking at Adam’s face and made himself turn, raise a brow. Adam stood very close. Ronan had never considered orange ear protection and safety glasses particularly attractive but seeing them on Adam, his insides coiled up again.

“Nah,” Adam replied. He ducked his head. “I used to shoot cans off the neighbor’s fence, back when I was a kid. We all did. The trailer park trash equivalent of extracurricular activities.” He boosted the gun against Ronan’s shoulder. “Here, feel that gap between your shoulder and your chest?” Adam pressed once, quickly, against Ronan’s right shoulder. “Yeah, okay, tuck the gun in there.” Ronan did as he was told, and did not think about Adam’s hands on his skin, or Adam adjusting his grip on the forend, or Adam’s breath on his neck. He thought about Gansey and the Gray Man watching, about Blue being too observant for her own good, about holding a loaded gun and pulling the trigger. It didn’t help. 

“Alright.” Adam stepped back, and Ronan breathed again. “When you’re ready, push the safety off, and hold it like I said. Then say ‘pull,’ and the clays’ll come shooting out of there.” He gestured to a point in front of and below the booth. “And then just ... fire.” 

“I’ve got that part figured out,” Ronan sneered. He tucked the gun against his shoulder once more, getting a feel for the thing. It was warm, and heavier than he’d expected. He flexed his right index finger around the trigger and stared down the barrel. “Okay,” he said mostly to himself. “Let’s do this.” He slid the safety off, and re-positioned the gun. 

“Pull.”

The clay sailed out faster than he’d expected. He pulled the trigger, and the gun kicked back into his shoulder like a punch. He blinked, growled, and fired again just in time to nick the second clay. It was over in less than five seconds. Somewhere in the background, Gansey whooped. 

“Not bad, Lynch.” Adam was back at Ronan’s side. He showed him how to reload, popping the empty casings onto the ground and sliding two more shells into the magazine. Ronan tried to watch without thinking about Adam’s efficient fingers, and failed. “Try again,” Adam said. 

This time Ronan was ready. He still missed one, but the second clay shattered magnificently when he hit it. He couldn’t help himself: he grinned. Adam glanced over, and it was as if his face had suddenly become a mirror of Ronan’s own. That smile could compete with Gansey’s for sheer effusiveness. For a moment, just a collection of heartbeats, Ronan let himself pretend his secrets weren’t secrets at all, let his grin spread to a whole smile, and pretended he saw - _did he?_ \- whatever warmth his smile held reflected back in the curve of Adam’s mouth. Then he dropped his eyes, twisted that smile into something more befitting Ronan Lynch: Snake-boy. 

“Thanks Parrish,” he said before realizing that Adam hadn’t said anything.

“Anytime, Lynch,” Adam said easily.

Ronan handed back the gun and muttered something about rescuing Chainsaw from Blue. He strode off. Gansey clapped him on the back, but he was asking Mr Gray if he could try again and Ronan didn’t linger. Blue stood under a tree nearby, one hand under Chainsaw’s belly, the other braced over her wings. 

“Did you bite her?” Ronan asked. He gathered the raven into his hands while Blue stuck out her tongue. Chainsaw had had enough of being held and flapped herself free to hide in the tree. She sent down a volley of shit immediately after, punctuated by a croak. 

Blue pointed at Ronan in a very Gansey-like fashion. “You,” she said like it was a thesis statement and an accusation and a revelation all in one. 

“Me,” Ronan replied. 

Blue stared at him in a way that reminded him uncomfortably of the women at Blue’s house, level and uncompromising and all too perceptive. _I know what you are_ , a voice whispered in Ronan’s memory. 

But then Blue smiled, the smallest curving of her lips, and sadness tightened around her eyes. She looked away. “We don’t tell him, do we?” she asked. 

Ronan sighed. A sudden breeze sighed with him, messing with Blue’s bandana and coaxing Chainsaw out of the tree and onto Ronan’s shoulder. Gansey was firing off more missed shots, the Gray Man was still laughing, and Adam was staring, staring back at the pair of them under the tree.

Ronan looked down at Blue. “No,” he said. “No, we don’t.”


End file.
